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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

A
friend recently put up a short post on Facebook in which he
dichotomises faith and science:

'There
are 2 ways of looking at the World: faith & superstition, or the
rigours of logic, observation & finally evidence. Reason & a
respect for evidence are the only sources of human progress, they
also provide a safeguard against fundamentalists & those who
profit from obscuring the truth.'

It
is the standard stuff we see from atheists, the usual
quasi-scientific piety that collapses upon inspection. The quote is
worth reproducing here since this view (in some or other variation)
is so common among atheists and accepted as being self-evidently
true.

'There
are 2 ways of looking at the World: faith & superstition, or the
rigours of logic, observation & finally evidence.'

1.
As is all too common, the dichotomy is set up. Faith and superstition
on one side, logic, observation and evidence on the other, with no
sense of compulsion to argue for such a dichotomy. It is an
unquestioned assumption and it is extremely
simplistic and problematic.

2.
Faith and superstition are put side by side with the negative
connotation that they are necessarily in the same backward category,
while science, of course, is free from all and any type of faith.

3.
'Faith' is thrown out with the intention of being derogatory, with no
thought given to the term and how it can hold different levels of
meaning in different contexts.

4.
Biblical faith is multifaceted,and is very much an
evidence-based faith, and not blind faith on a level
with superstition, as the quote wants to suggest.

5.
The quote fails to understand that certain scientific theories must
be taken by faith. Take the standard and widely accepted Darwinian
'theory' of origins. The hypothesis of common descent and
transformation is a hypothesis which has not been derived from the
observational sciences, and is therefore a hypothesis that must
largely be accepted on faith.

6.
The atheist presupposes that the origin of the universe and all of
life arose by purely naturalistic means. This is not a scientific
position but rather a philosophical position, and it is a position
that requires, one might say, an astonishing level of faith.

7.
Atheism itself, from which these grandiose statements find
their basis and confidence, is a belief which ultimately requires
faith. Atheism is not some default position that is true unless
proven otherwise; atheism shoulders a tremendous burden of
responsibility, yet it is taken as a given by a vast number of its
adherents.

'Reason
& a respect for evidence are the only sources of human
progress...'

1. Again,
this sounds very grand, very noble. Trouble is, it is fundamentally
flawed as, again, it presupposes reason and evidence are opposed
to and separate from faith.

2.
On a naturalistic scheme of things, how can one be sure that one's
reasoning faculties are accurately corresponding with the world
around them? If one believes that one's sense organs developed from
blind, physical, non-purposeful natural forces, then how can one be
sure that these sense organs provide accurate information about the
world beyond themselves rather than simply inferred from
them? The atheist must take by faith that their reasoning
facultiesare giving them accurate information about the world
beyond those reasoning faculties.

3.
Moreover, how can the atheist justify the validity of their reasoning
faculties without appealing to their reasoning faculties, thus
engaging in viciously circular argumentation? Again, the atheist must
take by faith the validity of their reasoning faculties.

4.
On atheism, what is human progress? To propagate one's genes,
perhaps? But given evolutionary assumptions, whence lies the
imperative to propagate one's genes? Why ought the
human species keep on moving?

5.
On Christianity, human progress can encompass a number of
meaningful aspects, for example by cultivating right and wrong and
moral and ethical norms in ourselves and in our young; by bringing
ourselves and our young closer to the creator by studying His word
and keeping His precepts; by loving our neighbour and impressing upon
them that we are all image bearers of God with intrinsic value,
purpose and significance to our lives; by sharing the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, and aiming for the ultimate in human progress by means
of the Spirit bringing the unbeliever out of bondage and into eternal
salvation. It is the Christian who can rightly and without
contradiction speak of human progress.
'...they
also provide a safeguard against fundamentalists & those who
profit from obscuring the truth.'

1.
Again, this is a mere rhetorical device that doesn't really mean
anything.

2.
Are there 'fundamentalists' (typically, 'fundamentalists' here is
being applied to all believers, with a complete misunderstanding of,
and thus narrow, derogatory use of, the term) who wish to profit from
their output, no matter how accurate that output? Sure. Richard
Dawkins, I believe, in his The God Delusion, would qualify as
one such wild-eyed, unthinking fundamentalist (properly applying the
derogatory usage here). So what? Are all atheists unthinking,
swivel-eyed, humanist manifesto-thumping fundamentalists?

3.
Traditionally, of course, a Christian fundamentalist would be one who
holds to the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Unfortunately,
the term has taken on a life of its own, with many an atheist showing
no willingness to apply the term – and thus represent the Christian
– accurately

Interestingly,
we must conclude that the claim,

'There
are 2 ways of looking at the World: faith & superstition, or the
rigours of logic, observation & finally evidence. Reason & a
respect for evidence are the only sources of human progress...'

is
itself a claim that cannot withstand the scrutiny of logic and
reason.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Put simply, the modern version of the
Euthyphro Dilemma is usually presented something like this:

Are morally good acts good by virtue
of their own nature, or are morally good acts good because God says
they are good?

The first horn of the 'dilemma' implies
that the good is external to, and thus independent of, God. The
second horn implies God's commands would, therefore, be arbitrary.

There are multiple problems with this.
We'll list a few.

1. The Euthyphro Dilemma assumes a very low
view of God. It assumes a non-specific God who hands down to a
disconnected creation laws which He is either subject to by virtue of
their already existing outside of Himself, or to which He is loosely
related through His arbitrarily revealing them to the creation.

It is important to point out that God's
commands, or divine laws, flow from His very nature, which is
essentially good. Being
the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, God is beholden to no-one
and nothing outside of
Himself. As
necessary Being, we
can say, No God, no good!

2. The God of Christianity is Triune.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit relate to one another
necessarily and eternally.
This interrelationship
provides the very foundation of morality. The
Persons of the Trinity are
not beholden to any external law, nor
are they subject to the
arbitrary commands of one or
the other. Rather, they are in co-relation out of perfect and uniform
love for one another. God's
commands, or
laws,
are
a reflection
of His very character and
nature, not the result of whimsical
arbitrariness or
impulsiveness, nor are
they the result of laws
external to God to which He is beholden.

Once
we take this
into account, along with
some of the essential attributesof
God, like the supremacy of
God, the sovereignty of
God, the immutability,
or unchanging
natureof God, the self-sufficiency of God,
and the goodness of
God, we begin to
understand that God's
character and nature is the very
standard of all that is good,
and the objections
posed by the Euthyphro Dilemma
vanish. God loves morally good acts because He is good,
and therefore His commands reflect His
essential goodness. God is entirely self-sufficient, and is in need of nothing outside of Himself.

3. In
some sense it is true that God loves morally good acts because they
are morally good,
and in another sense it is true that morally good acts are that
which God commands. But this
is a mere
tautology.
A necessary truth. It
does notentail
that there is a
standard outside of God, nor that God's standard is arbitrary, and
to argue such is to offer
an incomplete analysis.

We have an innate awareness of
God's divine commands, or laws. (Romans 2:15), thus moral obligations are divine laws. There is a necessary relationship between
God's moral law and our moral obligations. Duty-related
properties depend on God's commands,
but evaluative properties, such as goodness, do not.

It is true that an
action is morally obligatory since God has commanded it, but the
goodnessof an action does not depend on God's
commanding it; the goodness itself flows from God's essentially
good nature.

The proponent of
the Euthyphro Dilemma usually fails to take into account this distinction.

Now, a standard objection will look like this (or some variation
thereof):

'So
God
could have commanded that rape is good?'

No. God's very character and nature would prevent Him from doing so.
See the non-arbitrariness of God's commands above.

1.
To repeat, this
simply
ignores the rational and
valid explanation given by
the Christian, and is a
rather transparent
attempt to save the dilemma. God's
very character and nature would prevent Him from declaring
rape a morally good act. (see
above.)

2.
The objection shows that
the objector is aware that rape is
in fact not
a
morally good
act.
The
contrast is clear. The
objector attempts to communicate that God 'could'
have
commanded something bad
to
be good,
hence the objector, in the very objection, demonstrates that they
have an
innate knowledge
of what is good and bad. The
objection demonstrates they are acutely aware of the absurdity of
declaring rape to be a morally good act. And
if they are
aware of this, how much more God?